Modular & Extensible Cybersecurity Framework for Tactical Systems

Current Navy Cybersecurity solutions often employ complicated or unique interfaces to use and manage the various capabilities. They also typically require frequent updates to maintain their effectiveness against threats. This poses serious problems for the fleet when any update to a cybersecurity tool requires integration, testing, and redelivery of the combat systems Operating System and software applications. Additionally, once that redelivery process completes it still requires an availability window on every ship of sufficient duration to support an upgrade or reinstall of the combat system. We intend to design an open and modular framework that will enable rapid updates by removing that tail-end redelivery of the combat system. As new threats are identified and new rulesets and definitions are released for existing tools, we will be able to update the configuration of the combat system servers directly from the cybersecurity framework. This framework will enable faster and easier deployment of new cybersecurity tools including those developed by third parties. It will provide the ability to select a subset of tools from a larger superset of available cybersecurity clients, making surface cybersecurity software deliveries universally applicable as well as customizable.